In this role you can expect to:

• While some Engineering Managers might still be quite engaged in writing code, most spend a lot less time on coding activities. They are responsible for the productivity, progression and wellbeing of their team members, identifying and improving bottlenecks in their team processes, and spotting and clearing impediments to current deliverables.
• Engineering Team Leaders partner closely with the product leader working with their team to manage project scope and ensure the team meets technical deliverables.
• Working on the UW ‘Budget Plan’, which is a domain which looks at customer’s energy usage month-to-month, and helps the customer set the right direct debit amount.
• Next up, looking to start taking Energy Tariffs and Billing into our team - it’s currently owned by a legacy system, and this is our opportunity to make a really complex domain simpler - this won’t be a ‘lift and shift’ approach, but a dedicated attempt to do this from a green-field perspective.

Impact, Output and Outcomes

• The impact of a good Engineering Manager is for the most part measurable in the long term. They ensure that members of their team have the skills, tools and supportive atmosphere to do their best work. They create an environment of trust and transparency, they shield from distractions to create focus, and they campaign for resources when needed to get the right skills and people make up (training, hiring needs).
• Engineering Managers make sure their team's processes enable high quality, valuable and productive work at a sustainable pace. They facilitate and lead conversations to evolve the way their team works to ensure continuous high performance. They make sure essential team and cross team meetings happen and are effective, and that decisions made there are captured and communicated.
• They make sure the team has the context they need to make effective decisions and do their best work. For example, this could be ensuring team members understand the "why" behind their goals and deliverables, how their work fits in with UW's goals and OKRs, or raising awareness of what others are working on.
• Additionally, an Engineering Manager has significant impact through line managing people and making sure they develop and hone the skills that make them successful or even progress to the next step on their path.

Responsibilities:

Engineering and technical

• Expect some individual contribution within the role off the critical path.
• Ensure their team’s work is up to standards.
• Ability to understand very complex problem domains.
• Have a good understanding of event-based microservice architectures within an AWS, Golang and Kafka environment.

Delivery

• Able to manage their team’s delivery and workload, and makes sure the team delivers good quality, valuable work at a good and sustainable pace.
• Comfortable with agile practices, facilitates continuous improvement in their team.

Leadership

• Act as a leader and stakeholder for the technical roadmap of their area.
• Create visibility to their team of upcoming work; Expand the horizon on the team backlog; Bring in wider context relevant to the team.
• Strives to develop engineers within their org and help get them to the next level.

Management

• Responsible for shaping good habits and creating a good rhythm for their team
• Skilled at running effective meetings; Create room for quiet team members to voice their thoughts.
• Line manage and coach people 1:1
• Identify high and low performers, skill gaps and headcount needs for the team.
• Make sure conversations that need to happen do happen and with the right people involved.
• Build and maintain an awareness of team dynamics at play and (to an extent) personal factors.

Anti-patterns

• Mostly leads by authority
• Stays too close to hands-on coding at the detriment of team dynamics, knowledge or skills
• Their team burns out or conversely their team is unmotivated and/or “slacking”
• No gradual delivery; big bang delivery or tech only instead of “vertical slices of value”;
• Line reports unhappy, not improving or progressing, “stuck in a rut”

What's in it for you

UK based workers get the following benefits:

• Competitive, benchmarked salary
• Flexible/ remote working
• Share options -giving you ownership in the business
• 25 days holiday plus Bank Holidays
• Life Assurance up to 4 x your salary
• Private pension scheme
• Discounted UW services (30% mobile & broadband, 10% energy & insurance)
• A free UW cashback card - earning you cashback on all your spending!
• Discounted healthcare & medical cash plans
• A free virtual GP service
• Save As You Earn Scheme
• A range of Health & Wellbeing benefits including a confidential Employee Assistance Programme, virtual fitness classes and wellness tools
• Access to Spark – a holistic approach to learning and development created by UW to empower your personal and professional growth. You’ll have huge opportunities for exposure & development through involvement in a range of projects as we scale up as well as access to professional training relevant to your role.
• Regular team and company social events

Please note: Benefits and Terms may differ if you are not a UK-based employee

We provide equal opportunities, a diverse and inclusive work environment, and fairness for everyone. You are welcome to apply no matter your age, disability, gender, marriage or civil partnership status, pregnancy and maternity status, race, religion or belief, or sexual orientation.

Please note, if you are applying for a role which involves having access to personal data, you will be subject to a background check. Where checks are unsatisfactory or incomplete and/or a failure to reveal information relating to convictions that you are required to identify as part of the background checks, could lead to withdrawal of an offer of employment.